Comcast Beginning ‘Net Neutrality’ Testing

Comcast will begin testing what the cable concern has described as a "protocol agnostic" approach to managing bandwidth traffic during high-peak periods, Comcast said Tuesday.

Selected customers in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Warrenton, Virginia, are expected to receive e-mails on Wednesday highlighting the program. The 30-day tests are expected to begin Thursday.

"Unless you are an extremely heavy user of internet resources (which is not likely) you will not notice any change to your internet experience during this test," Mitch Bowling, general manager of Comcast online services says in the e-mail. "At the busiest times of the day on our network (which could occur at any time), those very few disproportionately heavy users, who are doing things like conducting numerous or continuous large file transfers, may experience slightly longer response times for some online activities, until the period of network congestion ends."

The move is designed to set aside complaints that the Philadelphia-based company has been throttling BitTorrent data and other peer-to-peer traffic to manage congestion. Comcast’s practices have been the subject of hearings before the Federal Communications Commission, which is set to announce new rules concerning the concept of net neutrality.

Comcast announced in March it was switching to a new network management technique by the end of the year for managing bandwidth use and congestion. The company said it was partnering with BitTorrent Inc. of San Francisco, to develop a neutral traffic-management protocol.

Given that peer-to-peer users are the biggest users of bandwidth, it remains to be seen who in practice the new tests would disrupt during congestion periods. For now, rules by the FCC give ISPs broad authority to manage traffic flows, although that might soon change.

Comcast’s testing follows the announcement by rival Time Warner Cable, which is to begin tests with customers on Thursday with metered access to bandwidth under a plan in which bigger users would pay more. Comcast has also publicly endorsed a metering plan, but has not roled out one.

Comcast has come under the ire of many digital rights groups for its network management practices. And last week, hackers took out their revenge against Comcast and redirected the Comcast.net homepage for several hours. The FBI is probing the incident. No arrests have been made.

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